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So far in the games I've been part of as GM or player we have usually had a disrupted attack count towards the multi attack penalty. Primarily due to the rules for disrupting actions on page 415 of Player Core:

"When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s effects don’t occur."

If your have an attack disrupted then you still use the action you committed to and hence as that action has the attack trait it would still count towards your multiple attack penalty.

Initially the specific rules for multiple attack penalty on page 402 of the Player Core seems to agree:

"The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your check. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your check."

However it then goes on to say:

"Every check that has the attack trait counts toward your multiple attack penalty, including Strikes, spell attack rolls, certain skill actions like Shove, and many others."

If an attack is disrupted there is no check so it would fall foul of this definition. As this provides additional definition to the multiple attack penalty does this take precedence and therefore should disrupted actions with the attack trait no longer count towards the multi attack penalty?

Is there a way for a pathfinder society character to speak Androffan without being an Android? It looks like it’s a rare language and isn’t one of the available ones if your from The Broken Lands.

Are there any official rules for falling off a moving vehicle? I can find rules for falling damage but nothing to take into account forward momentum.

Is there a Specialist Crafting specialism that Inventors can apply to their Innovations or Gadgets?

A lot of the specialisms could apply (Artistry for clockwork maybe) but just looking at your Innovation for example, you could justify needing at least Alchemy, Artistry and Blacksmithing.

Is there anything definitive or is it just up to the GM as per the description of the feat?

Is a weapon implement always considered a weapon?

I'm thinking of a situation where you switch from using your melee weapon implement to a one handed ranged weapon.

For example: You are currently using a short sword as a weapon implement. You then spend an action to draw your one handed ranged weapon (lets say an Air Repeater for simplicity). When you then make an attack with the air repeater do you get to use Implement Empowerment?

If you didn't have a weapon implement (but say an amulet) there would obviously not be a problem as you meet the requirements for Implement's Empowerment (single one handed weapon in one hand and an implement in the other).

However if your implement is a weapon implement, you have more than one weapon in each hand even if you are not using the implement as a weapon. Does this prevent you from using Implement's Empowerment? Or can you treat the weapon implement purely as an implement and not a weapon, thereby allowing you to use Implement's Empowerment for your attacks with your (In this example) Air Repeater?

At 5th level you can avoid this as you can freely switch your weapon implement for your secondary implement avoiding this issue but up until then, can you use your weapon implement as just an implement?

Am I missing something with the avid collector boon and it's access to firearms?

It would appear that you can take Avid Collector - Air Repeater and you would gain access to the item and ammunition. Also with it being a simple weapon any class trained in simple weapons would be able to use it without difficulty.

Is this correct?

Cheers

The text for Implement's Empowerment is:

The power of your implement can also be turned to the more common task of combat, its power adding to and amplifying the effects of runes and other magical empowerments. When you Strike, you can trace mystic patterns with an implement you're holding to empower the Strike, causing it to deal 2 additional damage per weapon damage die. Channeling the power requires full use of your hands. You don't gain the benefit of implement's empowerment if you are holding anything in either hand other than a single one-handed weapon, other implements, or esoterica, and you must be holding at least one implement to gain the benefit.

Are you able to use Implement's Empowerment when your implement is a thrown weapon (Likely with a returning rune)?

I'm not sure when the check for holding an implement would be from a rules perspective. Does it check that you're holding an implement at the point when it hits the target and causes the damage or at a point when you throw it?

Any ideas?

Does anyone know if there are any subsystems that allow you to reduce the minimum crew needed to use a starship?

Thanks

The guide to organised play states:

The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:

Death
Permanent negative effects, including polymorph or petrification
Curses

Does this mean that if you don't have the Achivement points to pay for a Second Chance Boon at the time of the adventure you can never make the character available for organised play again? Or, can you purchase the boon at some point in the future when you have saved up enough achivement points from playing other characters and then be able to use the character again?

What are the limits of Evolving Destiny?

The text for the evolving destiny boon (Taken from this thread: Link to Thread on Achievement Text is:

Evolving Destiny (Limited-Use, Service): Your early adventures have exposed you to difficult realities, forcing you to re-examine your skillset. Fortunately, your career is young, and course-correction is fairly straightforward. Between adventures, you can check the box that precedes this boon to completely rebuild your character so long as they have 48 or fewer XP (the Career Change boon allows you to rebuild a character of any level). Remove everything your character has purchased with gp, as well as their class, feats, skill proficiencies, and related features (but not their ancestry or background). Your character’s wealth is set to 85% of the total gold you’ve earned—this reduction represents a small amount lost from consumable use as well as items sold back for a particularly favourable rate. This rebuilding process does not change the amount of Fame, Reputation, or gp the character has earned, nor does it change the resources your character has expended on services such as spellcasting.

You can also refund any faction boons for the Fame price at which you purchased them, though you cannot sell back Limited-Use boons that you have expended or Faction Champion boons that you have used to earn Reputation for a faction.

All changes to the character must be applied by the time the character next plays an adventure; once the adventure begins, no further changes can be made with this boon.

You can’t retrain your ancestry, heritage, background, class, or ability scores. You can’t perform other downtime activities while retraining.

Retraining: Using Downtime to retrain character options(Core Rulebook 481) works as written with a few clarifications.

Some items are changeable for free, such as name, gender, appearance, or other cosmetic designators.
Pathfinder training may be changed and costs 14 days.
Changing a selectable class feature, takes 28 days.

If characters earn enough XP to level while still in the process of retraining they can choose options legal for their new build, though the ability is unusable until the retraining is complete. An option being retrained is lost at the time the new option becomes usable.

Looking at the Core rulebook and the organised play guide there are clear restrictions on retraining when it comes to ancestry, heritage, background, class, and ability scores and these are not removed by the additional rules on retraining in the pathfinder guide.

However I'm unsure how that interacts with Evolved Destiny:

As it doesn't mention retraining do we just look at the text of the boon and ignore the retraining rules when deciding what the boon covers?

Finally the text of evolving destiny doesn't make any mention at all of Ability Scores or Heritage. These are excluded from retraining but as mentioned earlier, the boon doesn't mention retraining in anyway.

The Swashbuckler’s Battledancer style states:

To you, a fight is a kind of performance art, and you command your foes' attention with mesmerizing motions. You are trained in Performance and gain the Fascinating Performance skill feat. You gain panache during an encounter when the result of your Performance check to Perform exceeds the Will DC of an observing foe, even if the foe isn't fascinated.

Question 1
Does the performance used for the performance check have to be a dance?

There are a number of performance types you can use each with different traits. The section on the performance skill states:

Performance Traits
When you use an action that utilizes the Performance skill, it gains one or more traits relevant to the type of performance. The GM might change these depending on the circumstances, but the most common performance based traits are listed below.”

Act or perform comedy: Auditory, linguistic, and visual
Dance: Move and visual
Play an instrument: Auditory and manipulate
Orate or sing: Auditory and linguistic

Each of these have their own advantages and disadvantages. Dance provokes attacks of opportunity as it has the move trait but can be used on anything, while sing is safe to use in melee but requires you to share a language with your target.
If the performance check has to be dance then that makes sense with the flavour text (It is called a Battledancer after all) but it doesn’t specify that it must be a dance performance in the rules section. If you can use any type of performance then the ability becomes more flexible as you can choose different performance types depending upon your opponent. It also has an impact on the Virtuosic Performer feat as that provides a bonus only for a specified type of performance.

Question 2
Do you have to use the Fascinating Performance feat or can you just make a performance check without it?

There is nothing in the description that states you need to make a performance check using fascinating performance. Although a performance check in and of itself does not require that you exceed the target’s Will DC the description in the text: You gain panache during an encounter when the result of your Performance check to Perform exceeds the Will DC of an observing foe does infer that you are using the Will DC as the DC for your performance check. However this is then further complicated by the last element: even if the foe isn't fascinated which does assume you have attempted a Performance check using Fascinating Performance.

Question 3
If you need to use Fascinating Performance to make the check to gain panache can you use it in circumstances where the target is immune to the effect?
Fascinating Performance states that:

When you Perform, compare your result to the Will DC of one observer. If you succeed, the target is fascinated by you for 1 round. If the observer is in a situation that demands immediate attention, such as combat, you must critically succeed to fascinate it and the Perform action gains the incapacitation trait. You must choose which creature you’re trying to fascinate before you roll your check, and the target is then temporarily immune for 1 hour. If you’re an expert in Performance, you can fascinate up to four observers; if you’re a master, you can fascinate up to 10 observers; and if you’re legendary, you can fascinate any number of observers at the same time.

The rider on the end of the paragraph states that all you need is for your performance check to exceed the opponents Will DC. But can you still use it on the same target on following rounds when the target is immune to the effect for an hour. Are you allowed to repeatedly take an action against an opponent that is immune to that action?

Sorry if this has already been discussed. I've tried to search for an answer but looking for threads about witch hexes was just coming up with discussions about their effectiveness.

My question is does sustaining a hex count against the one hex per turn limit?

The rules on hexes state:
As such, you can cast only one hex each turn; attempts to cast a second hex spell on that turn fail and the spellcasting actions are lost.

Looking through the Core rulebook Casting a spell is a seperate action to Sustaining a spell

If this is the case you whould be able to sustain a Hex at the same time as casting a new one. You would only be casting one Hex in that situation so you would appear to still satisfy the rules that you can cast only one hex per turn.

Is this the right interpretation?

Hello,

The other month there was a problem with receiving my subscriptions in particular Extinction Curse 3 and Threefold Conspiracy 2 where you sent out replacements.

I have just received your email saying you are also now sending out replacements for Extinction Curse 4 and Threefold Conspiracy 3. I think with the understandable lag in responding to emails we keep getting our wires crossed. I have never reported Extinction Curse 4 and Threefold Conspiracy 3 as being unreceived and in fact I have received them. Any chance of stopping these duplicates being sent out? I have no problem if it delays the other elements of the order.

Regards

We seem to keep crossing each other with the emails. You have just sent me an email saying you are sending out a replacement for chapter 3 of extinction curse but the last email I sent you begining of the week (Which looks to be in your backlog looking at the forum thread)that has now arrived (It's just the Starfinder one that's missing). I appreciate things are really difficult at the moment but felt this might be the best way to prevent the duiplicate being sent.

Regards

Simon

During a session we were discussing Biohacks and the disintegrator weapons in the Character Operations Manual.

The two elements seem to contradict. In the Biohack description you need to do some damage to enable the biohack to take effect. However, the Caustoject description implies that there is no damage from the weapon but the injection effect still occurs.

If you go down the line of specific over generic, this would seem to imply that a Biohack delivered via a Caustoject effects the target irrespective of damage reduction etc but the target would not suffer any the weapon damage.

This would compare against needler weapons which would do damage in addition to delivering the biohack but would run the risk of the biohack being stopped by damage resistance.

If you take the more general text in pg42 then the Caustoject would not be able to deliver biohacks despite being an injection weapon as it would always fall foul of the no damage rule.

Is there a clear answer (It’s likely to come up in a PFS game that I’m missing that would be great), or is it more of a GM / Table variation thing.

It’s probably something obvious I’ve missed after reading through the scenario but.....

Tried searching but I couldn’t find anything. Apologies if this has already been answered.

Does Debris Field last for the shorter of 1round or until you leave graviton mode, or the longer?

The rules text is:

This ability functions for 1 round or until you leave graviton mode.

I'm thinking of making a minor change to the skill focus feat. I don't think it would cause problems elsewhere but thought it might be worthwhile checking.

Firstly I apologise if this has come up before, I’ve had a look using search and not found anything but if I’ve missed it please feel free to ignore me.

One of the problems we have been having with Starfinder characters is the difference in effectiveness between a character with a class bonus to a skill (Mystic’s Channel Skill ability for their two connection skills, Technomancer’s Techlore with Computers and Mysticism) and one that does not have a class bonus.

This has hindered players who have wanted to have their characters be highly skilled in something that isn’t already part of their class (For example having a charming Technomancer, an Ace Pilot Envoy, or Soldiers with any skill). At lower levels this can be worked around with the Skill Focus Feat, which allows a character without a skill bonus from their class to keep up because it grants an insight bonus which duplicates the insight bonus from the class abilities. However, at the higher levels they start to lag behind as this bonus never increases beyond +3.

In order to allow characters without a class bonus to keep up even at higher levels I am considering changing the Skill Focus Feat to instead read (The bold sentence is the change):
------
Skill Focus
Choose a skill. You gain +3 insight bonus to checks involving the chosen skill. This bonus increases to +4 at 11th level and by a further +1 every 4 levels thereafter.
You can take this feat multiple times, its effects don’t stack. Each time you take this feat, it applies to a new skill.
------
I have considered allowing the feat exactly as it stands in the current Pathfinder rules (which provides a +6 bonus once you have ten ranks in a skill) but felt that that allows characters to have a skill higher at certain levels than currently possible within the game which may well create other difficulties. I also thought about an Improved Skill Focus feat to provide a larger boost but felt that two feats were unfairly expensive for the benefits gained.

Anyway. As far as I can tell this doesn’t create any potential problems further down the line but I was interested to see if there is something that I’ve not taken into account. Hence posting it here.

Many Thanks.

Hello,

I submited an email last week to cancel my Starfinder Accessories Subscription (All other subsriptions remaining) but have not received a reply.

Many Thanks

Simon

I'm a little confused over the disguise skill and the rules for perception. Although the general state when someone is merely disguised but not as a specific individual is explained (opposed roll) when it comes to modifiers etc there is a different emphasis.

The disguise skill states you cannot disguise yourself as a specific individual. However under the rules for using perception to pierce a disguise the modifiers are all based upon how well the individual knows the person that you are trying to disguise yourself as.

From Disguise
"Disguises are general - you cannot disguise yourself as a specific person"

From Perception (pierce disguise)

"If the disguised creature is impersonating a particular individual that you know, the GM may grant you a bonus to your perception check"

"The DC for perception checks to pierce a disguise are adjusted according to how familiar the observer is with the particular individual the disguised creature is masquerading as,"

The only interpretation I can come up with is that the section on pierce disguise is written for when a character has an ability that specifically lets them disguise themselves as an individua, although I'm struggling to find such an ability.

One of my players as asked me to come up with a polearm wielding swashbuckler, and wanting the polearm to be used two handed. Specifically, they want their character to be a swashbuckling worshipper of Shelyn and thus use the Glaive.

The approach below would appear to work as far as I can tell however I would certainly find it helpful if anyone can spot obvious errors or problems with it to let me know.

Clearly even if this works, it is not an optimum build especially for a Glaive with its low threat. Although elements of it can obviously be improved using Fighter Advanced Weapon Training (Trained Grace springs to mind, as can choosing a different weapon for example a Nodachi, the player concerned is more than happy with it if it complies with the rules.

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere but I couldn’t find anything in my message board search that didn’t pre-date the changes to Kata Master as part of the 2nd printing.

Anyhow:

Feats and class taken:

Level 1 Swashbuckler
Level 1 Feat: Weapon Focus (Glaive)
Level 2 Monk: Kata Master/Master of Many Styles (Master of Many Styles not strictly necessary but it brings the whole package into play by level 3)
Monk Bonus Feat: Spear Dancing Style (Glaive)
Level 3 Fighter (Can be other classes but this brings it into play at level 3 for all races not just human)
Level 3 Feat: Two Weapon Fighting
Fighter Bonus Feat: Spear Dancing Spiral (Glaive)

Relevant Abilities and Logic

Kata Master (ACG):

Panache: At 1st level, a kata master gains the swashbuckler's panache class feature. At the start of each day, a kata master gains a number of panache points equal to his Charisma bonus (minimum 1). His panache goes up or down throughout the day, but usually cannot exceed his Charisma bonus (minimum 1). A kata master gains the swashbuckler's derring-do and dodging panache deeds. A kata master can use an unarmed strike or a monk special weapon in place of a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon for the purpose of swashbuckler class features and deeds. This ability replaces stunning fist.
This was changed in the 2nd printing to remove the opportunity parry and reposte. However, the changed wording in both the PRD and the 2nd printing also removed the old qualification that the monk weapon only qualified as a light or one handed piercing weapon for the purpose of deeds gained through the archetype.

Spear Dancing Spiral (WMH):

While using Spear Dancing Style, you gain the benefit of Weapon Finesse with the chosen weapon if it is appropriately sized for a creature of your size category. In addition, you can use any feat or ability that functions with a quarterstaff with your chosen weapon.

Logic

The quarterstaff is a monk weapon and therefore qualifies as a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon for swashbuckler deeds and class features, as per the kata master description.
You can use your chosen weapon from spear dancing spiral as a quarterstaff for any feat or ability that functions with a quarterstaff.
Therefore, whichever spear or polearm you take as your spear dancing style chosen weapon can be used with swashbuckler class features and deeds. Thereby allowing you to regain panache while wielding the weapon (In this case a glaive) two handed and use it for any deed that doesn’t have additional exclusions (Precise Strike for example also requires you to have nothing in your offhand so would still be disallowed).